Saturday, April 5. 2008

I've been experimenting a bit with pancakes lately and have some findings to report.

I've been substituting some of the water in my pancakes for applesauce, both for flavor reasons and texture reasons. See, applesauce functions rather well as an emulsifier, kind of holding everything together. It will perform much the same function as eggs or oil in pretty much any recipe, while reducing the calories/fat/cholesterol/whatever added by those things, and adding a subtle sweetness component to your food at the same time. [For a healthy treat, try replacing all the oil from brownie mixes with applesauce; far less bad-for-you-stuff, same (or even "improved") brownie texture. Or, try adding applesauce to your French toast batter for the moistest French toast ever.]

The first time I substituted half a cup of the required 1.5 cups water for applesauce and found the cakes an improvement. They don't really taste "appley," per se, but the texture is a little bit more "chewey" despite the pancakes being extremely thick and airy. It came out so well that today I decided to kick it up a notch and substitute a whole cup of the required cup and a half water. The result was pancakes that were even better than the prior batch. The only thing you need to watch out for is that the applesauce adds quite a lot of sugar to the cakes (but it's "natural-found-in-fruit"-type sugar), which causes extra browning. You can compensate for this by turning the heat down a little; they'll cook a tad more slowly, but they'll come out wonderfully. I've got quite a sweet tooth, usually preferring to drown my pancakes in syrup, but I found these to be darn tasty all by themselves. They're still not really "appley" in flavor, but they're excellent, and not really dry like thick fluffy cakes usually are.

This applies primarily to "instant" or "just add water" style commercial pancake mixes, but I see no reason why it wouldn't work equally well if you are making your pancakes from scratch. The batter may seem alarmingly thick, and you will have to kind of "coax" it into pancake shapes on your griddle, but resist the temptation to add more liquid. Your faith will both be rewarded.

Be sure to let me know your results if you try it -- especially if I ruin your breakfast.

Quicksearch

About the Author

jer@nyquil.org

The author lives in Vancouver, Washington, USA with his girlfriend and a menagerie of cats, rats, fish, birds, guinea pigs and robots.

Among other inanities, he strives to use investigative techniques to work young starlet breasts into every aspect of rational discourse -- focusing on the discourse, thus making it not perverted. Also, has recently begun a career as "Internet hairstylist."

He can be contacted via email and Jabber IM at 'jer@nyquil.org'. He likes to be contacted.